


embroidery

by buhnebeest



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-28
Updated: 2014-11-28
Packaged: 2018-02-27 06:58:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2683538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buhnebeest/pseuds/buhnebeest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shepard knows, intellectually, that making a failsafe like this is a good call. It’s good. The next cycle should get a head start. They should get time to prepare. Maybe she should scribble a note to whatever poor bastard finds the capsule first: ‘no one’s going to believe you, so for fuck’s sake bring the VI with you.’</p>
            </blockquote>





	embroidery

The door closes behind Liara with a faint whoosh. Shepard stares after her for a moment, the stinging silence in her quarters only broken by the faint shuffling of Boo wandering around his cage. There’s a trickle of unease pooling in her gut, some niggling thread of discord that feels too fragile to examine too deeply; surely if she unravels it, the whole tangled mess of doubt and frustration will strangle her where she stands.

A time capsule. Modeled after Vigil.

Shepard knows, intellectually, that making a failsafe like this is a good call. _It’s good_. The next cycle should get a head start. They should get time to prepare. Maybe she should scribble a note to whatever poor bastard finds the capsule first: ‘no one’s going to believe you, so for fuck’s sake bring the VI with you.’

Not that she’s bitter or anything.

She feeds Boo, watching him gulp down sunflower seeds with the kind of gusto one might expect from a starving krogan. When her hand is empty and his cheeks are full Boo goes straight for his little house without as much as a ‘by-your-leave’, content to wait to be spoiled another day.

“Don’t blame you a bit, little guy,” Shepard murmurs, closing the cage. She means to head to the bathroom, take a shower maybe, but somehow her body isn’t willing to do much more than make a 180 turn. Shepard stares at her own fingers tapping out commands on her terminal, which flashes a cheerful blue in answer.

“Shepard?” Garrus asks, voice vaguely tinny over the comm. The subvocals never really come out right over this thing. “Did you need me for something?”

“Yeah.” She breathes out slowly. “Can you come up here for a minute?”

“Can it wait for a bit? I’m in the middle of—”

“ _Garrus_ ,” she blurts, surprising herself as much as him. She closes her eyes, takes a breath. “Please.”

There’s a brief silence on the other end of the line she doesn’t want to interpret. Then: “Of course, Shepard. Give me a second.”

She expects his second to take at least fifteen minutes, so she heads for that shower, stripping off her clothes and dropping them as she goes. She’s oddly relieved the Alliance didn’t fuck around with her cabin after she handed over the SR-2. Cerberus is many things, but prudish about creature comforts is not one of them. Shepard closes her eyes and lets the excellent water pressure beat down over the sore muscles in her shoulder, still achy from a shot she took in the rachni caves yesterday.

She wonders idly how Garrus would describe her to the next cycle.

As if summoned by the thought he appears in the doorway, fumbling with his visor before setting it down by the sink.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey.” She reaches for the shampoo. “I thought you were gonna be longer, sorry.”

Anyone else and she would have invited him to join her. But Turians don’t shower: the water irritates the sensitive skin between the grooves of their plates. Instead, they scrub sand-like powder over their hides to keep them clean and smooth, and they use all kinds of brushes and salves and files in any way fashion and custom might dictate. She watches Garrus do it, sometimes, fascinated by the way such a simple thing as getting clean can be so alien. She can’t help him with the sand, as it scrubs her hands completely raw, but she likes preening his fringe and dabbing kichra, a kind of thick, sweet-smelling tar, along the jagged lines of his mandibles.

“You sounded like it was urgent,” Garrus murmurs.

She flushes a little, even though he doesn’t sound accusatory. Curious, maybe, which is fair. Worried, probably also fair. She’d assure him she’s fine if she thought he’d believe her. It would help if she knew how to explain the knot in her stomach.

Unfortunately, Garrus is not the kind of man who is conveniently flustered by nudity. He might have been once, in the beginning, when he was still learning the ways her body could be attractive to him, how it worked, how it fit together with his. Now that he knows these things – biblically – her body is as familiar to him as the Widow, fine-tuned perfectly to his exacting specifications, and the day Garrus fumbles the Widow is the day she walks up to Harbinger with a white flag in hand.

“You sounded sad.”

Shepard sighs and dunks her head under the spray, rinsing out the dregs of shampoo. When she emerges, Garrus is halfway through taking off his armor, which is at least a step in the right direction.

“Yeah, I… had a visit from Liara just now.”

“Oh?” There go the leg braces, and the cover over his spurs.

“She had this thing to show me, it was…” _it was_ good. “…a project she’s been working on.”

“What project?”

Just the undergarments now, a stretchy leather-like bodysuit he always wears under his armor. He leaves it, though, and instead reaches for a towel in the cupboard under the sink. Shepard watches him approach her with it, something he’s only ever done for her, and unravels the knot.

“Liara doesn’t think we’re gonna make it,” she says. There. There it is.

“What?” Garrus pauses, looking honestly baffled. “She said that?”

“She made a time capsule.”

She watches him, his brow-plates tilting up in confusion, then coming back down in understanding. “Like Vigil.”

Shepard turns off the water and goes to him.

It surprised her at first, but Garrus is a good hugger. He’s not soft, not by any stretch of the imagination, but he’s… solid. Warm. He has big hands to curve around the nape of her neck, to grip her waist; thick fingers to trail up and down her spine. While Garrus learned her body she was learning his, and she knows the best ways to cling to his carapace, how to curl her fingers around his cowl, how to press her face into his shoulder. With their combined expertise, they can snick together like puzzle pieces.

Now, he bundles her up in the towel and draws her to him, holding her close. His subvocals trill comfortingly, a soft kind of hum she associates with good things, quiet things: Garrus curled around her in the morning, Garrus pressing his forehead to hers before she leaves him to his calibrations; Garrus twining his three fingers with her five, tugging her to bed.

“Liara has absolute faith in you,” he says, painfully gentle. “You know that, Shepard.”

“I know.”

“And it’s not a bad idea.”

“I _know_.”

“…not the best idea to show it to _you_ , maybe,” he adds distastefully, and she barks a surprised laugh, pushing back just enough to look up at him. He’s got that glint in his eye, pure swagger. “I mean, what with your delicate sensibilities and general lack of perseverance—”

She kisses him to shut him up before he can get any traction, which works about as well as can be expected: him with no lips and hers stretched in a stupid grin. It only makes her laugh harder, until finally Garrus starts herding her to the bed.

“I’ll show you delicate sensibilities,” she manages, and tackles him.


End file.
